


Musings of a Grieving Mommy Blogger

by ArsenicInYourPudding



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, idfk why i'm posting this, whoo sads galore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-25
Updated: 2013-10-25
Packaged: 2017-12-30 11:26:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1018052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArsenicInYourPudding/pseuds/ArsenicInYourPudding
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Scott and Allison are dead, and Stiles is left with two young children and a whole lot of pieces to pick up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Musings of a Grieving Mommy Blogger

**Author's Note:**

> So, um. One part 'let's stretch our writing muscles for NaNoWriMo by writing every day', two parts 'I am having a really shitty couple of weeks, someone get me out of here'. I don't know why I'm posting this now, I finished it about a week ago now, I guess, but whatever. 
> 
> Um. Warnings. Semi-graphic depiction of people being found murdered, also lots of sads and I don't know how to write grieving kids at all. So there's that.

“Come on, guys, time for bed. No, Vickie, we already watched Mulan once this week, and besides, it’s a school night and I already let you-- Oh god, please don’t make the face. You know I can’t say-- Awh, fu-- Okay, fine, it’s only eight thirty, we can watch it.”

 Victoria bounced up to hug him around his waist, her small bare feet stepping up on the tops of his Wonder Woman socks. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she giggled up at him. He sighed, not loving the fact that a five year old conned him out of the hard-and-fast bedtime rule yet again, but smiled down at her and reached down to pick her up.

 “Alright, sweet thing, but seriously, we are not making a habit of this. Before you know it, you’ll be in high school falling asleep during chemistry and racking up detentions a year in advance because you don’t know how to enforce your own bedtime.” He carried her over to the stairs and set her down part of the way up. “You know the drill, babe. Find your PJs and grab Mr. Muffins, I’ll be up to set the timer for brushing teeth in a minute.” Stiles glanced over his shoulder at the living room. “You seen your brother anywhere? Vernon, dude, where’d you go?”

 “I think he’s behind the couch,” Vickie said, in that matter-of-fact, I’m-helping-you-stupid tone that all firstborn children can’t help using.

 Stiles sighed. He didn’t know what it was about Vernon and the back of the couch, but he was going to have to start vacuuming back there pretty soon if he didn’t want the three year old to start developing asthma from inhaling dust bunnies. “Thank you, Vickie. Go get ready for bed, please.” He walked over to the couch and crouched down to peer into the space between it and the half-wall that separated the kitchen. “Hey, tiger, whatcha doin’ back there?”

 Vernon was curled into a ball on the floor, his head laying against the ground. “Where’s Daddy,” he whined. “I miss Daddy.”

 Stiles’ chest constricted, and it took a moment to get enough air to answer. “Daddy’s... Daddy’s gone, buddy, I’m sorry.”

 “Well, bring Daddy back.”

 Stiles shifted to sit on the floor, his shoulder pressed against the wall for support. His eyes stung. “I can’t... I can’t bring him back.”

 Vernon raised his head and crawled a little closer, still out of arm's’ reach. “Mommy?”

 He choked a little bit and shook his head. “I can’t bring her back, either, buddy.”

 “But you’re Uncle Stiles.”

 Stiles bit his lip hard enough to draw blood and pulled his knees up to his chest. After a minute, Vernon shuffled over on his knees and laid his forehead against Stiles’ elbow. “Do you miss Daddy and Mommy too?”

As gently as his grief would allow, Stiles pulled Vernon into his lap and bound him in a tight hug, shoulders shaking violently. “Yeah,” he managed after a long, half-silent minute. “I miss them a lot.”

Vernon tucked his head underneath Stiles’ chin and cuddled into his hoodie. “When are they coming home?”

Stiles choked on his godson’s sullenly hopeful words and buried his face in Vernon’s flop of dark hair, unable to answer. After a minute, a small hand patted the back of his head sympathetically. Victoria had lowered herself to the floor beside him, her large green-gold eyes watching him without a word. “We don’t have to watch Mulan,” she said quietly.

“What? No, no, we can watch it,” he said, his voice hatefully unsteady. “No, I think that’d be a good thing to do tonight. Can you go find the DVD for me, sweets?”

She levered herself to her feet with the arm of the couch and scampered over to the entertainment center. Stiles gathered Vernon in the crook of one arm and plopped them both on the couch, lifting an arm for Victoria to tuck herself into when she came back from setting up the movie. “Bedtime after this, okay guys,” Stiles asked. Vernon nodded against his chest, his thumb already wedged firmly in his mouth.

And if Stiles cried at the decimated village and the doll abandoned in the snow a little more than usual, neither of the kids were awake to see it.

* * *

Nights had never been kind to him, not since his mom died, and it was only getting worse with everyone else he’d lost.

_His dad, eyes wide with terror and glazed over entirely, sprawled against the bottom stairs of the house Stiles grew up in, his gun knocked just inches out of reach. His throat shredded, blood pooled around him._

_Chris Argent’s car found, after three weeks of werewolf-aided search efforts, at the bottom of a ravine just off the interstate, tires shredded by what appeared to be something with very large claws. Ironically, it was the dehydration, not the fall or even the head wound, that killed him._

_Scott’s voice on the phone, asking if Stiles could take the kids for the weekend. He and Allison were following up on a lead, it should only take a couple days. He was always a horrible liar._

_Allison, tied to a tree outside the rotting carcass of the Hale ruins, a silver handled knife pinning her abdomen to the trunk. Scott’s body (the half they could find, anyway) hung from a nearby branch. Even in death, they stared at each other._

“Stiles?”

He sat up in bed, grateful for a distraction from the horror movie playing out on the inside of his eyelids. “Hey, sweet girl, what’s wrong?”

Victoria took that as all the invitation she needed and crawled up next to Stiles, wiggling under the covers. “Bad dream,” she mumbled from the cocoon she’d rolled herself into next to his hip.

Stiles hummed sympathetically and didn’t tell her that he was in the same spot himself. “You wanna talk about it?”

“No. Can I stay?”

He scoffed. “Of course you can stay. When have I ever not let you stay?”

She didn’t answer, only wiggled closer and reached out under the blanket for his t-shirt. He wrapped an arm around the lump in the blanket she made next to him and reached over for his phone to check the time – 2:38am. He sighed. Depending on how emotionally overwrought they both felt in the morning, he might just keep her home. She’d missed a ton of second grade anyway since the funeral (and the fact that it had only been one funeral was both a blessing and a curse for them), one more day wasn’t going to kill anyone. He should really just consider homeschooling them both, at least for a year or so.

“Stiles?”

“Mm?”

Victoria was quiet for such a long moment that Stiles was tempted to think she’d just asked to make sure he was still awake. He’d almost drifted back into his own thoughts when she spoke again. “Do you think Mom and Dad are in heaven together?”

Stiles faltered. He’d never been particularly religious, and the idea of heaven and hell seemed remarkably manipulative. But Victoria’s head was a steady weight against his chest, and that was something he could always believe in. “Yeah, I think so. They’re probably very happy together, but I bet they miss you a lot.”

She sniffled and curled tighter against him. He sighed and ran his fingers through her hair. “Shhh, shhh, I know, baby girl.”

“Why did they have to die,” she whimpered. Stiles sucked in a deep breath and buried his nose in her hair. Because Peter fucking Hale is evil manifested in human form, he thought bitterly.

“I don’t know,” he whispered instead. “Sometimes...sometimes life just sucks.”

“I wish it didn’t.”

“You and me both, sweets. You and me both.”

* * *

Stiles unfolded himself from the kitchen chair he’d spent the last four hours, rolling his neck and grabbing blindly for his coffee mug. His spine popped like every vertebrae fitting back into place as he walked to the coffee pot, and he winced. Since when did he, a 23 year old with the athletic capabilities of a second-hand Argent, have the joints of a geriatric?

He paused with his arm shoulder-deep in the pantry, trying to find a box of something, he wasn’t exactly sure what, when the doorbell  rang. No one ever rang the doorbell, in fact he’d been sure it didn’t work at all - the few visitors he did have either knocked or used their own key. Eyes narrowed, he squinted at the clock on the stove - 12:18am. Cautiously, he padded out of the kitchen, feet as quiet as he could manage on the squeaky hardwood.

The cabinet under the stairs was filled with weapons pilfered from both Chris and Allison’s private stashes. Crossbows, components for molotov cocktails, shotgun shells with wolfsbane mixed in with the buckshot, and enough firearms to probably get him on an ATF watchlist lined the unfinished walls. Stiles glanced at the front door and selected a crossbow, loading a dart as he walked back toward the front door.

Distorted by the peephole, a scruffy man in a beat-up leather jacket rolled his shoulders and started to slink off the deck. Stiles yanked the door open, nearly clipping himself in the face. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

Derek turned, eyes flashing bright blue as he stumbled on the steps. “Stiles,” he said, and he sounded so much older than he was, and less guilty than Stiles would have appreciated. “I, um.”

“What is your problem, it’s midnight. You’re going to wake my kids up,” Stiles hissed, closing the door behind him. Dimly, he recognized his possessive mistake - they were Scott’s kids, really, not his - but the startled look on Derek’s face didn’t change, and Stiles had always been too petty to not enjoy Derek’s discomfort.

“Kids,” Derek asked weakly, shuffling from one foot to the other on the middle step.

Stiles folded his arms over his sweater and leaned against the door frame. “Victoria and Vernon. Scott and Allison’s, technically - or hadn’t you heard?”

Derek winced like he’d been struck, and his mouth twisted in agony. “Stiles, I’m so--”

“Save it,” Stiles interrupted coldly, toying with the crossbow in what he could only hope was construed as a threatening manner. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re as much at fault for their deaths as that rogue band of hunters.”

That appeared to have more effect than it was meant to. Derek crumpled, shoulders going limp and head hanging. “I know,” he said quietly. “I know. I shouldn’t... I never should have...” He gasped, like something was choking him. “I’m so sorry, Stiles. I’m so, so sorry.”

“Sorry’s not going to give those kids their parents back,” Stiles muttered. “Where were you, huh? When we needed you. When Chris and Scott and Allison and my dad, Derek, when they died, you vanished. And now, we’ve all moved on, what’s left of us, anyway. And now all of a sudden you come back? Not fair, dude. You don’t get to just waltz back in here, into your old spot. Don’t you get it, your spot is gone.”

Derek glanced up, and was mildly startled to find Stiles staring at him like he was about to cry. “Everyone is gone,” he gasped, leaning back against the door. Thoughtlessly, Derek stepped back up on the porch, instinctively reaching for Stiles’ hands to draw his pain onto himself.

Stiles shook his head and launched himself into Derek’s chest, muffling his gasping sobs in his t-shirt. His free hand curled into a fist and ricocheted weakly off the leather covering Derek’s shoulder. “Where were you when I needed you,” Stiles gasped, and Derek nearly choked on his lack of an answer.


End file.
